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6 Awesome Board Games to Play at Christmas With the Family

As Christmas is edging closer, we've picked a selection of top family board games to keep you occupied after your turkey dinner.

Christmas Day is for spending time with family, opening presents, eating turkey, drinking and settling down to watch endless hours of TV. It’s also the ideal time for the whole family to sit down and spend time enjoying some good old board games.

We’ve put together a list of top board games you and your loved ones can enjoy over the festive season. You’ll find a mix of old classics to newer games you may not have heard of. You’ll also find games suitable for all ages, from the family friendly Pie Face! to the more adult oriented Cards Against Humanity.

Have yourself some table-top fun this festive season and read on for our selections for the best board games to play over the Christmas holidays:

Monopoly

Price: £7.90

It wouldn’t be Christmas without the family gathering round for a game of Monopoly.

There are so many editions of the classic board game ranging from Disney to The Simpsons, but here we’ve gone for the original and best.

Monopoly is the fast-dealing property trading game that will have the whole family buying, selling, trading and having fun.

Own it all as a high-flying trader in the fast-paced world of real estate. Tour the city for the hottest properties: sites, stations and utilities are all up for grabs. Invest in houses and hotels, then watch the rent come pouring in. Make deals with other players and look out for bargains at auction.

Pie Face!

Price: £16.99

Pie Face is an easy game to play. Simply load the throwing arm with cream and take turns twisting the handles for as many clicks as the spinner indicates and hope you don’t get whacked with the sponge! Score a point for every time you turn the handle without getting pie-faced, score 25 points and win!

Cards Against Humanity

Price: £25.00

Whilst we might not recommend unboxing Cards Against Humanity in front of the old folks, it’s truly brilliant fun if you don’t mind dark humour.

The aim of the game is to complete sentences using the most absurd words and phrases possible which are distributed randomly to players on cards. In the makers own words, ‘this is a game for horrible people’, which gives you a good idea of what to expect.

Exploding Kittens

Price: £19.94

Exploding Kittens made history last year when it became the most funded project of all time on Kickstarter, with around 220,000 backers pledging money to it.

Exploding Kittens is described as a ‘highly-strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette’. Players draw cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten, at which point they explode and they are out of the game. Unless of course that player has a defuse card which can defuse the Kitten using things like laser pointers, belly rubs, and catnip sandwiches. All of the other cards in the deck are used to move, mitigate, or avoid the Exploding Kittens.

Fun and easy to pick up, Exploding Kittens is a must play game for Christmas. Mixing humour, strategy and great artwork on the cards, it would also make a brilliant present.

Mysterium

Price: £26.99

If you’ve never heard of Mysterium, think Cluedo with a supernatural twist.

In the 1920s, Mr. MacDowell, a gifted astrologist, immediately detected a supernatural being upon entering his new house in Scotland. He gathered eminent mediums of his time for an extraordinary séance, and they have seven hours to contact the ghost and investigate any clues that it can provide to unlock an old mystery.

Unable to talk, the amnesic ghost communicates with the mediums through visions, which are represented in the game by illustrated cards. The mediums must decipher the images to help the ghost remember how he was murdered; Who did the crime? Where did it take place? Which weapon caused the death? The more the mediums cooperate and guess well, the easier it is to catch the right culprit.

It’s not the easiest game to pick up but once you get into it, Mysterium is one of the most engrossing board games on the market. It’s worth buying it for the gorgeous artwork alone.

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